


ar·tic·u·late

by Riddle



Category: Amazingphil - Fandom, Danisnotonfire - Fandom, Phandom, dan and phil
Genre: Comfort, Disability, Hospital, Hurt, Recovery, sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riddle/pseuds/Riddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan Howell's reputation has always labeled him as "Posh" despite his proud insistences that he is in fact "Articulate". However after Dan has a violent seizure one night, it is found that Dan has a brain tumor resting on the speech center of his brain which threatens to take away his voice and everything that makes him the Eloquent and well spoken person that he has always been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes in life we deserve the things that come to us. We are bad people and so bad things happen to us, sometimes we are good and the world treats us the way that we have treated it. Call it justice or karma or whatever you want, it’s a force that is as brutal as it is mysterious. Some times things happen that aren’t deserved and somehow, when you don’t deserve it and you aren’t expecting it, it hurts even more. 

That morning had been like any other, nothing was supposed to happen, but then I suppose life is always full of cruel irony. 

Dan sat on the sofa in his living room scrolling Tumblr when Phil’s voice rang in from the kitchen. 

“You want some tea Dan?”

“No thanks Phil, I am about to upload and I need to focus.”

Dan could hear Phil’s chuckle from two rooms away. He had been making videos for over six years by now, but he still had that ever pestering fear that one day people would just not click the video and everyone would forget about him. So he liked to focus when he made his uploads out of some weird delusion that told him if he focused people would keep coming and staying. 

He pressed upload and the little loading bar began to fill slowly.

Once the video was up and live Dan’s fears for that night went away. People were watching and commenting and sharing it, people loved it. 

“What are they saying?” Asked Phil sipping his now Luke warm tea 

“Oh the usual cyber bullying.” Dan laughed 

“Aw man did you get Waffle-y in this one?”

“Hey there is nothing wrong with planning something out and being eloquent Phil.” Dan said mock offended 

“Well your audience is different than mine after all.”

Dan rolled his eyes “It’s the same audience Phil.”

“That’s the drill right? ‘Dan and Phil’ come for the ‘reasons why I was a weird kid’ and stay for your posh rants.”

Dan snickered “Not posh, Artic--…”

Dan stopped in the middle of his sentence his voice cutting off suddenly. 

Phil looked up from his mug. “Dan?”

All he saw was Dan staring straight forward vacantly with empty eyes. 

“Dan?” Phil said again “Dan what are you doing?”

No response. 

Phil felt his brow furrow “I’m serious Dan quit playing around.” 

All Dan did was nothing, until he did something. 

His laptop crashed to the ground as he slid off of the couch and onto the hard wooden floors. His body making a hollow thud as it collided with the ground below. 

“Oh my god Dan!” Phil said his mug falling from his hand as he rushed over to Dan on the floor, whose eyes still stared forward 

“Dan!” Phil said trying to shake Dan’s shoulders “Dan can you hear me?”

There was no response. 

Phil called 999 as quickly as he could pull his phone from his pocket. 

He tried to explain the situation to the dispatcher but he was too terrified to be any help to the woman on the other end of the line. He couldn’t help but panic.

A few minutes into the call something changed. Dan’s neck locked together and his body went ridged, his left arm extending straight out and his right pulled in tight to his chest tightly. He began to convulse rhythmically. 

Phil screamed into the phone trying to explain what was happening, but his own shaking voice and tears made it almost impossible to make out what he was saying. 

The EMTs arrived a few seconds later thank god. They rolled Dan onto his side and injected something into his vein that stopped the shaking. 

“What the hell is happening?!” Phil screamed as they lifted Dan’s seemingly lifeless body onto a gurney

“I think you friend has just had a seizure.” Was all they could tell him at the time. 

Phil rode along with Dan in the ambulance. He was too scared to be alone.

Once they arrived everything was a blur they rushed Dan away to a room far away from Phil, and they wouldn’t let him follow because he wasn’t direct family. 

Phil could only sit and fill out some paper work and sit harshly while tapping his foot anxiously. He felt a numb sort of sick, like his body was processing too much shock for it too handle. The adrenaline was the only thing keeping him sane. It stopped him from thinking about Dan a few times, which was a blessing that Phil wouldn’t realize until much later. 

Several hours passed and Phil was a mess through every one of them. It wasn’t until almost 6 am that someone finally came out to talk to him—despite the number of times he had previously demanded to speak to someone in charge. 

“Your friend had a seizure Mr. Lester.” Said the Doctor 

“Yeah that’s what the EMT said, is that all you have figured out?!”

“It’ll be hard for us to know more until he’s fully conscious again. He probably wont remembers any of it though. Seizure patients rarely do.” 

“Do you know anything? Are you even trying to figure anything else out?”

“Like I said, we will run some tests once your friend is more stable.”

“Can I see him?”

“No.”

Waiting was definitely the worst part of this Phil thought I could handle this if it weren’t for all of the waiting. 

Phil really couldn’t even believe this was happening yet. He thought back to those few moments before everything had gone to shit when everything had been so normal. It was almost boringly normal, how had all of this happened in a single second? It wasn’t fair.

Phil thought back as best as he could, had anything weird been going on with Dan before tonight? No. Of course not! Right? Well except Dan did have the flu a few weeks ago but that couldn’t be related right? It couldn’t have been his headaches either, could it have been?

Phil felt a pit form in his stomach. What if the signs had been there but he had ignored them and over looked them and they could have prevented this? Was this his entire fault? 

Those headaches…Dan had been having them off and on for the last month or two. But they had both just joked that that’s what they got for making a life around harsh computer screen lights and the Internet. But what if it had been more?

A few more hours passed and Phil stayed sat in his same seat, boiling in his own misery until he was hot in the face and so guilty he couldn’t stand it. 

Right as he was about to try to stand up and pace around a nurse called out for him from the central desk. She told him that he had been paged from one of the rooms, apparently his ‘friend’ was ‘awake’ and his ‘doctor wanted to speak to’ him. 

Phil knocked gently on the doorway and came in slowly not sure what to expect. 

Dan was lying down on a hospital bed, his face looking pale and sickly. His arms and neck looking bruised and sore. He had bandages wrapped around his shoulder and the top of his head. A plastic air tube pumped air in through his nose. He almost looked like more machines and wires than person. 

“Hey Dan.” Phil said softly 

Dan’s eyes met Phil but he didn’t say anything. 

“Mr. Lester why don’t you have a seat, we need to talk to you about some of the test results.”

“Me?” Phil said caught off guard “Why?”

“Mr. Howell doesn’t have any immediate family near by and we wanted you to be around when we explain what we’ve found.”

Phil felt his blood pressure spike on the doctor’s last few words. 

Dan just looked tired and weak, he didn’t look worried just apathetic and emotionless. 

“What do you mean ‘Found’?”

“We did a few tests which led us to a few more and eventually we were looking over the results of an MRI and we…we found something.”

“The cause of the seizure?” Phil asked meekly 

“Technically yes. But it’s worse than that. The seizure was a symptom of what we found.”

Phil swallowed hard and was quietly wishing that he could be sat closer to Dan or holding his hand or something, he was supposed to be there to support Dan but he was the one that needed the support in this moment. 

“I’m afraid that we did find a benign tumorous growth near the speech center of his brain.”

Phil felt his lungs suck down a hard and sharp breath. He felt a wave of dizziness nock him backwards in his chair and felt a sudden need to vomit in the nearest trash bin. 

“W-what does that mean for Dan?” Phil asked his voice and his body trembling from disbelief 

“He had his seizure because of his body going into shock from the pressure that it was creating in his cranial cavity, we were lucky to have found it though, remember that. Its not cancerous also, thank god. But we will need to preform a procedure to remove it.”

“And then everything his fixed?”

“We can’t know for sure with brain tumor patients, but there is a very good chance that this tumor will have lasting effects.”

“What kind?” Phil said sadly trying to meet Dan’s distant eyes as he stared off into the abyss 

“There is a good chance that he may never talk again, or if he does, it may never be the same as it was before, there will be damage in that area that will affect speech control. It may be irreversible.”

Phil’s heart broke in his chest, filling his lungs with cold and sharp punctures. He felt hot tears brewing behind his eyes and he struggled to keep them back. 

Looking over at Dan though, Phil lost that strength when he saw his friend’s eyes staring directly at him, a single tear rolling down and out of one eye.


	2. Chapter 2

Phil had wanted to take Dan home, at least for a little while, but the doctors were adamantly against it. He saw it as a way to comfort Dan and keep him in a familiar place, but the doctors argued that it was dangerous to even take him off of the hospital campus.

“Is it really that serious?” Phil asked 

“It is,” Said one doctor certainly “He could seize again at any time, we need to watch him and monitor him until he can have his surgery.”

Phil nodded. He looked down at his notes on his yellow legal pad that he had been carrying around all day. He had been traveling around the hospital meeting with different doctors and technicians while Dan had some more tests done. They talked about potential options and they made plans based on Dan’s scans and blood panel work ups. 

But it had all been a blur. 

As much as Phil wished that he could be laser focused on finding the best course of treatment for Dan, he was still terrified out of his mind and unable to focus. Even the notes that he had taken that day didn’t do much to help him remember every conversation that he had had that day. It felt endless. 

“When do you think that will be based off of today’s tests?”

“We could do it as soon as a few days I think, it would certainly be better to remove the tumor sooner than later. It would be his best chance.”

Phil scribbled down words onto his note pad hoping that he would remember this conversation unlike those that had come before it. 

“What will this procedure mean?” Phil asked hesitantly 

“Well it will remove a lot of immediate threats, probably stop the seizures and start the road to an eventual recovery we hope.”

“Do you think remission is possible after all of this?” Phil asked looking through the glass wall at Dan lying in his hospital bed. He didn’t look sick anymore, his bruising was going away and he was sitting up. He was even eating a cut of red Jell-O at that very moment. 

“We have to hope so,” said the doctor “Recovery always occurs at least to some extent after the main problem is taken care of, but a full recovery is unlikely especially for someone in his position.”

“But I mean things like that happen to other people…” Phil said trailing off looking over at Dan again, there was a hint of doubt and defiance in his voice like he was arguing a point based solely on opinion rather than fact “I mean people who smoke get sick, people who do drugs get sick, people that are old and fragile get sick and get tumors. Not people like Dan. He’s only 24, he’s young and strong he can overcome it surely.” 

The doctor took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose clamping his eyes shut, like he was having a violent headache.

“Mr. Lester, people of all places in life gets sick. It’s a sad but inevitable truth. Sometimes a life long chain smoker and drug abuser lives until 90 and a marathon runner drops dead at 26 of a head attack…there is no one way to be sick.”

Phil could feel his heart breaking. It wasn’t fair. 

“I think if Mr. Howell is going to make it through all of this, he is going to need your support. And if you are really going to be there for him you cant have any misconceptions about your friend’s condition,” The Doctor said harshly “He is very sick Mr. Lester, that is a fact and there is no denying it. He may move on and get better like we are all hoping, but there is a chance that he will lose the ability to talk and communicate and there is the very real chance that he will die on that operating table—brain surgery is not always neat and predictable.”

“But there is a chance!” Phil insisted forcefully “There is a chance that he will recover!” 

The doctor just looked at him with sad eyes. Like Phil was a hopeless dreamer and the doctor didn’t have the heart to pull him back down to earth. Which of course was true. 

“I’d go be with your friend Mr. Lester.” The doctor said exhausted “If I were you I mean.” 

He turned and walked down the fluorescently lit hall before ducking into another room and disappearing. 

Phil turned too and glided slowly into Dan’s room. 

“Hey buddy how’s it going?”

Dan looked up from his Jell-O cup startled by Phil’s presence. His eyes panicked as he swallowed the bite of red jelly and tried to form a word with his lips.

“g-GOoD.” Dan stuttered struggling to make each sound 

“That’s good.” Phil said taking a seat by his bedside 

“I called your parents, they are on their way down right now.” Phil said flatly 

Dan nodded, his eyes sad and tired at the thought of facing his parents in his current state. 

“It’ll be fine. They just want to be here for you.”

“I-I KnnnnN-ooow.” He answered cautiously but still tripping over his own words 

Phil could feel himself giving Dan those same sad eyes that the Doctor had given him. He shook his head, determined not to pity his friend. 

“Here,” Phil said pulling out his laptop from his bag “We can use this.”

He booted up his computer and opened up the Notepad icon, handing it over to Dan for him to type into. 

“Thanks Phil.” Dan typed slowly with one finger, his other hands tangled up in wires and cuffs 

“No problem.”

“You have talked to the Doctors right?” Dan typed out 

“Yeah I have.” Phil said nodding 

“What do they say?”

“…Well you may be able to have your surgery pretty soon.” Phil said 

“And then things will get better?” Dan typed, looking over at Phil with puppy dog eyes 

“Uh…yeah they say you’ll probably be fine afterwards.” Phil said, dying slowly on the inside as he heard his deceitful words echo over and over in his own ears. There were lies to protect someone’s feelings…and then there was whatever atrocity he had just done…

Dan smiled weakly “That’s good.” He responded, his keys clacking rhythmically as he typed 

“Mhm…” Phil felt a hollow sickness take over him, it was one thing to lie to a friend to make them feel better, but he had just lied to his best friend and told him that he would recover when in all likelihood he may die in any day that followed. 

Dan looked back to his screen and stared typing away, oblivious to Phil and Phil’s internal debate of conscience. 

He turned the screen so that Phil could see, a video was loaded up and Dan pressed play. 

Once the picture loaded fully Phil could see that it was the Speech Jammer video that they had done with Cat several months ago. 

“What is this for?” Phil asked 

Dan just pointed at the screen, encouraging Phil to watch in silence. As the video went on Phil began to understand. Dan was reliving the moments in their lives where they both had been tongue tied and helpless to communicate, where their words couldn’t come out and they couldn’t make sense no matter how hard they tried. 

“I’m sorry Dan…” Phil said, “This isn’t fair.”

Dan shook his head as if to say “No…no it isn’t.” 

They watched a few more videos together until they were both feeling sleepy and decided to drift off. Phil put in his headphones and drifted off. He woke up slowly what must have only been a few minutes later when his song ended and his headphones went quite. He could hear every noise in the room: every beep and buzz and hum, even those voices from the laptop that Dan had propped back open on his lap. 

Phil opened one eye and kept the other shut, trying not to move. He listened to the voices on the laptop and realized a trend. They were the same words repeated over and over again, on a continuous loop. 

It was Dan’s introduction from that Speech Jammer video…the first one that he had done so flawlessly that it shocked both Phil and Cat into silence and then annoyed protest. The ease that he spoke with was so fluid and graceful that Phil really understood the jokes about Dan being “Posh”.

His one open eye drifted up to Dan’s face and he watched as Dan followed the images with his eyes and tried to mouth along to the words that he was saying in the video like they were some kind of template. 

As his lips tripped over themselves and his tongue froze and twisted he became visible frustrated as he slammed the laptop cover down and sunk down into his pillow crying silently into the soft fabric.

Just as Phil was about to sit up and come clean from his increasing guilt, a nurse barged into the room and started to fiddle with the wires connecting Dan to the machines around him. 

“What are you doing?” Phil said suddenly and urgently 

The nurse jumped, started. “Oh I didn’t see you there. Sorry but they found a time for Mr. Howell’s surgery and they can fit him in right now.” She continued to pull plugs and cables from the wall

“He is getting is surgery right now?!”

“Yep. There is an opening in the operating theater schedule and his surgeon has agreed to preform the operation right now. I need to get him into prep immediately.” 

Phil watched helplessly in the corner of the room as Dan’s bed was wheeled from the room and down a hallway to an uncertain fate. His fresh tears still wet on his cheek and Phil’s lies still swirling in his head—the only thing still keeping him going.


	3. Chapter 3

Phil didn’t know what he could do next. They wouldn’t let him watch the surgery siting the face that he wasn’t “family” but Phil didn’t care how they defined family, because Dan was definitely part of his family and he knew that he was part of Dan’s for sure. He couldn’t handle the waiting.

Every few hours a nurse or someone would come out and give Phil and update on Dan’s condition which Phil would then relay to Dan’s parents via text. Dan’s parents were on the road, rushing to their son’s side all through the night. Phil couldn’t stand the insinuation that since he and Dan didn’t share blood he wouldn’t do the same. 

Another nurse came down the hallway in light blue scrubs, she was maybe the third that Phil had seen so far. 

“Are you Phil Lester?” she asked him clinically 

“Yes.” Phil wasn’t sure what exactly to prepare for…good or bad? Better or worse?

“Well you see the surgery is ab—“ and just then two middle aged people—one of above average and one of average height, but both with dark brown hair and eyes.

“Where is he?!” they both demanded “Where is our son?!”

“Mr. and Mrs. Howell!” Phil exclaimed his eyebrows jumping off of his face

“Oh!” Mrs. Howell cried wrapping Phil in a deep embrace “Phil we were so glad that you were here for him through all of this, we can never repay you for being there for him!” 

“I would never have been anywhere else I assure you.”

“You are Mr. Howell’s parents?” The nurse asked 

“Yes.” They agreed 

“I had just come out with an update that Dan’s surgery is reaching a critical point and that these are going to be some of the toughest moments for him.”

“What is happening right now that makes it dangerous?” Mr. Howell asked 

“They are beginning to cut into the gray matter of the brain, they happen to be in a very sensitive area of the speech cortex at the moment and if the surgery will go wrong, it is likely that it will here.” 

Mrs. Howell reached her arms around her husband embracing him for comfort as she sucked in a sharp inhale. 

“So he could die?” she said with a sniffle 

“Yes.” 

“Can we see? Can we watch I mean?”

“Alright,” the nurse said cautiously “but just you two, family only.”

Mrs. Howell frowned “This boy here,” she said gesturing to Phil “is part of our family, and should he wish, he will be there with the rest of us.” 

Phil felt warmth spread through him, finally someone understood. 

“And I do,” Phil said, “ Wish to be there I mean.” 

The nurse nodded slowly and led them to a viewing room above the operating theater. The curtains were closed, and she made sure that all of them were sat down before she opened the curtains because “sometimes the sight can be traumatic, people faint.” 

“Open it.” Mr. Howell said 

The curtain pulled to the sides and in the center of a sterile room was Dan unconscious and lying on the table with tubes attached to him at every entry point. There was a screen behind his head where the surgery was occurring and where presumably his skull was open and his brain was exposed. Traumatic may have been just the right word…

Mrs. Howell stifled a scream and clamped a hand around her mouth leaning forward in her seat. 

“My baby boy…”

Mr. Howell said nothing but his face spoke great volumes 

“Dan…” Phil whispered putting one hand up to the glass

“Was he afraid?” Dan’s mother asked 

Phil knew that this wasn’t the moment for honesty “No, it was incredible.”

She smiled and looked back into the theater.

“He was always such a brave child you know,” She said not taking her eyes off of Dan “always doing crazy stuff and driving my husband and I insane in the process.”

She said it with a sense of such nostalgia that Phil began to fear that she was expecting the worst.

“Didn’t he change his name to Lara once?” Phil asked laughing; it was a story that Dan and shared with him far before he had thought to make a video out of it 

She smiled again “Yeah, he had such an imagination…that’s why he was always so good at making videos…”

“Yeah he is really talented.” Phil confirmed 

“You know Phil,” Mr. Howell interjected “I am not sure that we ever thanked you for all that you did for our son.”

“Me?”

“He may not believe it, but we saw how unhappy he was in school and in university, we noticed everything that he thought we didn’t.” Mr. Howell continued softly “He was so unhappy so much of the time…all of the time in fact, except for those moments when he was filming or writing videos, and that is thanks to you.”

Phil felt his face go red.

“You inspired him to make videos and to be happy, which is all that we could have ever wished for him. Thank you.”

Phil felt his breathing go haywire, as he seemed to lose control of his tears too.

“We are so glad that the had you in his life, and no matter what happens today, we are so eternally grateful that he met you and that you changed his life the way that you did son.”

Phil lost all control of his tears and felt himself go in for a hug taking both Mr. and Mrs. Howell into his wide wingspan. Quietly and between tears Phil said “thank you.”

As they watched the rest of the surgery there was a sense of tension. All of them waiting and none of them knowing what would happen or even what to do in many of the eventualities. Phil personally tried to, but could not imagine his life without Dan…the thought was impossible. 

The surgery came to a close before any of them realized that the hard part had even ended and they all went back and waited in Dan’s hospital room. 

Less than an hour later Dan was wheeled back into the room still laying supine on his hospital bed. His head was wrapped in bandages and the tubes that were helping him breath stayed running thought his body like a complex circuit. His face was pale and lifeless as he slept, it didn’t feel anything like being with the Dan that all of them had come to know and love. 

“Will he live?” Mr. Howell asked the second a doctor crossed the threshold of the room 

“Um, we believe so,” the doctor said caught of guard by the intensity “the surgery was by all means a success and he is set to recover well.”

Dan’s parents cried and held each other tight. 

“But how will he be after?” Phil said remembering how fickle brain surgery was and his conversation with the doctor less than a day before 

‘That we won’t know for sure until he wakes back up.” The doctor said solemnly 

And without further queue all three of Dan’s closest family members turned to face him with the same look on their face and the same thought running through their heads: Please Please Please Dan, for the love of god, be okay!


	4. Chapter 4

“They admitted the serum thing already didn’t they?” Dan’s mother asked nervously fidgeting in her seat 

“Yes they did.” Her husband said 

She tried to stay quiet but couldn’t seem to handle the silence “And how long before he should wake up?”

“It could be any moment.” Mr. Howell said lovingly and patiently 

Phil wanted to say something but couldn’t find any words for how exactly he was feeling. His best friend in the world, the person he cared about more than any one else was just in for brain surgery and might never speak again what words was he supposed to use to express something like this?

Dan’s two parents were sat on the other side of the hospital bed from Phil, they were holding hands and watching closely as machines helped their unconscious son to breath. Phil held Dan’s hand tightly, it was clammy and cold but feeling Dan’s pulse through his hand just helped Phil to remember that Dan was alive and that that was what mattered. 

Every moment felt like it might be ‘the one’ he couldn’t explain it but deep down Phil kept hoping every time he looked over at Dan his eyes might be open and every moment so far had been a disappointment. Though Phil felt strange because he wasn’t sure if when Dan woke up it would be good news or bad news, maybe he wasn’t ready to handle the news if it was bad? Why hadn’t he thought of the bad news?! He had kept focusing on a future where Dan was alive and as well as before—it seemed to be the only thought that helped him to hope for the future instead of their past. But…what if that future was gone? Was he just kidding himself? Or was this pessimism? 

There was no way to know until this was over and he could look back. He needed to know the facts of the matter before he was ready to judge his reaction. 

“Come on Dan.” Phil said in a whisper squeezing Dan’s hand

It took only a second to recognize but as soon as his grip loosened he felt Dan’s hand squeeze back.

“OH my God!!” Phil said jumping out of his seat 

“What?!” Mrs. Howell screamed rushing to Phil’s side of the bed 

“I felt his hand squeeze mine!”

“Are you sure?!” 

“Absolutely.” Phil said remembering the exact feeling all over again 

Dan’s mother knelt down at her son’s bedside and put her hand on his stroking the top of his hand with her thumb reassuringly. 

“Daniel? Can you here me Daniel?” she said in a soft soothing voice “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” 

Every pair of eyes in the room watched Dan’s hand intensely waiting for his reaction. 

“Daniel?” Mr. Howell said his voice nearly breaking 

“You can do it Dan.” Phil assured Dan quietly 

“Wait! There look!” Mr. Howell shouted excitedly pointing at Dan’s face “I saw his cheek twitch!”

Mrs. Howell stood up and still with Dan’s hand in her grasp she pushed aside Dan’s hair and stroked his forehead like only a mother would. 

“Come on baby, give us a sign.”

Phil saw for himself this time, as Dan’s eyelids seemed to strain. He leaned in. 

Dan’s head rolled to the side slightly just enough so that Phil could see his whole face, pale but alive. 

“Come on!” Phil begged silently squeezing his own eyes shut “Please Dan, wake up!”

In exactly the moment that he opened his own eyes he watched Dan’s brown eyes flicker open and land directly on him. 

“Dan!” Phil exclaimed 

Dan’s eyes opened wide and Phil could see a rush of air pour into Dan’s chest. 

“Thank god.” Mrs. Howell said looking down at her son with tears in her eyes 

“Ill get a doctor,” Mr. Howell suggested already half out the door “Be sure to yell if…you know…you hear anything.”

“We will Phil promised.”

Phil smiled and watched as Dan tried weakly to smile back at him, his thin pale lips spreading apart into a tired and slightly crooked smile. 

“Come on Dan,” Phil thought boldly “One more miracle, say something…please.”

“Hi Daniel,” Mrs. Howell said, “It’s your mum.”

Dan’s eyes seemed dreamy though as the anesthesia was still wearing off and he couldn’t seem to focus on any one person. 

Phil sat back down next to Mrs. Howell putting his hand on top of hers so that they both could bring him comfort. 

He seemed to toss a bit as he continued to wake up, and the doctor that finally arrived with Mr. Howell checked him out and noted that this was all a normal part of waiting for anesthesia to wear off. Mr. Howell and Mrs. Howell bombarded the poor doctor with questions about when he would be fully awake, but all Phil could do was marvel at how dark and brown Dan’s eyes were, he regretted immediately how he hadn’t appreciated them while they were so dependably open before. Even ditsy and totally high and out of it, Dan was incredibly handsome and Phil just felt his entire heart do gymnastic routines every moment that he watched him. 

Since Mr. and Mrs. Howell were off across the room and engrossed in their current session with the doctor Phil gave in and leaned in close to Dan’s ear and whispered “I missed you Dan.”

As he backed his head away he saw Dan break out into a drug-induced smile and start laughing in a way that was both animated and groggy. 

“Phil.” Dan said slightly slurred with a bright toothy smile 

Phil felt himself gasp for air and felt warmth fill his entire chest and butterflies filled his stomach. 

Both Mr. and Mrs. Howell spun around upon hearing Dan’s voice and rushed to his side. 

“Daniel!” Mr. Howell said, “Can you hear me?”

Dan smiled again and laughed almost manically 

“No I can’t hear you,” He said in a joking tone “You are too far away.” 

“Do they have you on some good meds?” his father said laughing but with tears in his eyes 

“The best ones!” Dan garbled 

“You are not too far,” Dan said pointing at Phil “You are just right.”

“Oh am I?” Phil chuckled playing along, too deliriously happy to think of any thing else 

“Yeah.” Dan said 

Phil’s smile couldn’t seem to go away, and he never wanted it to. 

“This guy knows exactly where to be.” Dan informed his parents 

“Well you two do know each other.” Dan’s mom agreed encouraging him to keep talking 

“Yeah, Phil is the best!” Dan giggled, “I love this guy.”

Phil felt his entire face flush red. 

“Haha yeah I missed you too buddy,” Phil said quickly trying to cover up what Dan had said while simultaneously trying to figure out how it was meant. 

Dan rolled onto his side slightly “I always loved you, never knew how to say it,” Dan cackled ramblingly “I love you Phil Lester!”

And in that moment without another thought or care, and with complete disregard for who else was in the room Phil smiled and in the biggest moment of honestly in his life and replied “And I love you Daniel Howell.”


End file.
